Abstract
The thesis is a study of Iron Age and Early-Medieval settlement (i.e. 0 - 1400) in Hadeland, c. 70 km N of Oslo, Norway. The wider problem discussed is whether burial monuments can be used to discribe the development of settlement in general. The first part of the thesis is a critical examination of the sources. The Distribution of finds is compared with that of agricultural activity in historical times and with the distribution of archaeological acitity in the course of the last 150 years. The comparison shows that these factors have indeed influenced the number of finds, but only to a lesser extent their geographical distribution. The distribution of ancient monuments in Hadeland (surveyed between 1790 and 1980) is probably representative of the actual settlement in the Iron Age. Within this framework of settled areas the finds have been used to describe the development through different periods of the Iron Age. They bear witness to quantitative changes in the settlement size and to qualitative changes in the preference for different environments. In the second part of the thesis four environmental factors are investigated: bedrock, soils, altitude and local climate. The early Iron Age settlement (to 550) was located in environments which have always favoured for cultivation, but in later periods, especially the period 1200 to 1400, settlement expanded to less suitable environments.